Tasmanian Devils and Lord of the Fries

Our first day on the ship it was raining outside, and our cabin felt a bit cool. So did everything else, and we didn’t worry about it. (No worries, Mate!) But by the next evening, it felt like the air conditioner was running full tilt (It was) and no adjusting of the thermostat would get it to rest. Our cabin steward apologized, but nothing could be done until the next day. He gave us extra blankets. Sure enough, the next day a team came in and took a lot of stuff apart, and it has worked perfectly ever since… but that first night was cold!

Fiordland

We spent a day cruising in Fiordland; the southwest portion of New Zealand’s south island. A Fiord is a valley formed by a glacier, then flooded with sea water. A Sound is usually formed by flooding a river valley, instead of a glacial valley. This means that generally, a Fiord has much steeper walls than a Sound.

Many of the Sounds in Fiordland are actually Fiords, but were named incorrectly long ago. Without arguing about how accurately they were named, we cruised in Dusky Sound and around Resolution Island and out Breaksea Sound. Then it was up the coast a ways and in Doubtful Sound, leaving by way of Thompson Sound. Then northward along the coast to Milford Sound, where we were lucky enough to have toured a few weeks ago. All the views were spectacular. Watching the sun rise behind islands or mountains was a thrill. So the following are pictures from Fiordland, and I’m not going to try and itemize every one. Just enjoy the beautiful scenery of Fiordland.

Oddly shaped bird flying towards the mountains…

You might miss the magnitude of these falls if you don’t compare to the tour boats below…

Towel Creatures

Like on a lot of cruises we’ve done, the cabin stewards make funny animals out of towels. I decided I’d beat Rio, our guy, to the punch one night and I made a snake out of a towel. Pretty crude, but I cut out eyes and a forked tongue to finish it off. He loved it!… and responded with a far better snake, but reusing my eyes and tongue. I tried to make a more involved animal… an octopus… Which looked pretty weird but it really did have eight legs. He makes far better towel creatures! I haven’t photographed them… maybe later.

Tasmania

The morning we arrived in Hobart, Tasmania, was cold and rainy.

We thought we’d just walk around a bit, in our rain gear. I had this silly idea that Tasmania was a somewhat small island, and the town of Hobart would be somewhat small also. I also had in the back of my mind that Tasmania was its own little country. Majorly Wrong! Hobart is huge! So is the island of Tasmania, as we’d discover later. And it is an island state of Australia.

I liked the name of this restaurant across from the harbour…

Since we only had the one day to spend in Hobart, we elected to do the Hop On/ Hop Off bus tour. In the rain. It gets worse… We could sit in the lower part of the double decker bus, and peer through foggy wet windows, or we could sit on the normally open upper level. There was a tarp over the top, and we had our rain gear on… what’s wrong with that?! When the bus stopped, rain would pool in between support beams, then as the bus moved or turned, gallons would pour down around the edges. We only sat in aisle seats, but it still was really wet. And cold. Still interesting, with lots of nice architecture to be seen. We didn’t get off and linger anywhere, and actually zoomed back to the ship for lunch and a hot shower! Below are some mediocre pictures, shot from a soggy bus into the rain, but showing a bit of Hobart.

The Tasman Bridge is an impressive structure over the River Derwent in Hobart. We were viewing this just after hearing about a ship destroying the bridge in Baltimore. I was almost glad we weren’t driving over it…

That evening, however, we had scheduled an after-dark visit to the Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary. Our bus drove us very safely over the bridge, and even safely back later that night!

Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary

Bonorong is a privately owned and operated haven for injured animals of all types. They have a wide variety of creatures, and evening is supposed to be the best time to see them when they are active.

Our guide showed us this baby Wombat. It looked adorable, and really wanted to be asleep. They keep him in this blanket pouch, to simulate the pouch his mother would have kept him in. (Australia is full of a variety of marsupials – mammals with mothers who keep babies in a pouch while they grow.)

While this little Wombat is quite docile now, our guide says they get really mean pretty soon, and are really violent when grown.

Having grown up seeing the Tasmanian Devil on Warner Bros. Cartoons, I was looking forward to seeing what they actually look like. They are not too large, perhaps like a smallish dog. But they are fierce! They are lousy hunters, with terrible eyesight, but an amazing sense of smell. Because of their shortcomings as hunters, they mostly act as scavengers. They eat an entire animal… bones and all. They don’t chew on bones for hours, like dogs do. They crunch right through bones like they were pretzels. It’s spooky to listen to, and worse to watch! Their heads are large for their bodies, to allow for massive jaws, teeth and muscles. (The pictures from here on get worse as it got darker…)

They had nice signs teaching about their critters:

One bird we’d hoped to see out in the wild, was a Tawny Frogmouth. There were a couple at Bonorong, and seeing them even in an enclosure was tricky. They mimic a part of a tree pretty well! A fascinating bird, they look somewhat like an owl, but they aren’t owls. They are more closely related to Oilbirds, Nightjars and Potoos. Ever seen a Potoo? Me Too! The Tawny Frogmouths are very good at imitating tree branches!

This next picture looks like our guide was terrified, but she was actually quite calm, holding this Blue-tongued Lizard. She said there are several in this enclosure, and they are so hard to tell apart, they named them all Frank. They have a nasty bite, but are pretty harmless if you handle them correctly. They eat bugs and snails that you probably don’t want around, so you shouldn’t be afraid of having these Blue-Tongues around. This is similar to the one we saw on a golf course outside of Sydney a few weeks ago.

Here’s the Tasman Bridge, still standing after our two trips over it, as viewed from our verandah.

And more of Hobart as we left:

Our ship left Hobart, and sailed west across the east coast of Tasmania, for a long time! This island is huge. About 3/4 the size of Texas. And Texas is really huge.

Melbourne

Two days later, early morning saw us arriving in Melbourne.

I’m always interested in the mechanics of the big ships in these harbours, and the way they load and unload them. This gadget is pretty cool too… to load and unload passengers! Like an airport’s jetways, this thing can drive around, and stretch a telescopic covered gangway up or down as needed to match up with a ship.

Once off the cool gangway, we boarded a tram into town.

We headed for the King’s Domain park looking for birds. We found a big war memorial instead – The Shrine of Remembrance.

The memorial is shaped somewhat like a greek façade topped with a ziggurat. The displays inside discuss Australia’s history in wars from pre-WWI to current time. Extremely well done, you could spend days in the exhibits and not see it all… that is, if you wanted to spend your ONE day in Melbourne inside a giant tomb.

At the top of the stairs a camera crew was filming a lady, apparently for a newscast. They were just testing for a while, so I don’t know what she was going to talk about. Probably didn’t concern me…

Inside the central chamber:

Spectacular views of Melbourne from the top!

At noon, we searched the phone for likely lunch spots. Lord of the Fries won, just from the fun name! A decent veggie burger and fries.

Just a block down from LOTF, is a beautiful bridge with a nice view down the Yarra River.

After lunch, we headed to Studley Park. Again, with a name like that, who could resist? Here the Yarra River winds back and forth like a snake, with the whole area set aside as a park. Having crossed the elaborate pedestrian bridge over the river, we selected a little track that followed the river through the forest. It was a very small trail, and we saw few people. We had fun talking with couple of ladies hiking together. They asked us about where we were from, and asked how we found out about this trail. They were impressed that we’d found it, and said most Melbournites didn’t know it existed! That made us smile!

On the walk back from the park, we found this huge building. You can read it’s history below… Australia’s first steam powered hat factory. Who knew steam powered hats were a thing??

I saw these soap displays in a store, and the funny name caught my eye. Even stranger is the claim that this Goat Soap is Orangutan Safe! I sure wouldn’t like to buy goat soap that wasn’t safe for my orangutan!

Soon we were back on board, watching Melbourne fade off into the distance.

Lifeboat Restocking

While walking around the Promenade Deck, we saw there were lots of boxes under each lifeboat/tender. LOTS of emergency food and water. They replace the stock in the boats every few years, and this is the time! If the lifeboats are deployed, in an emergency or for use as a tender, they are lowered to the water and boarded from ramps down below. But when they are stowed away above the Promenade deck, they are accessed (by crew only) by ladders. So one guy climbs up the ladder, throws a line over a pulley and the guy below ties a box of supplies on the line. It gets hoisted up, and while the top guy stows it, the bottom guy ties the next box on. There are 16 of these boats, and all were getting restocked pretty much simultaneously. As we circled the boat, we could see some teams were a bit more efficient than others!

The other aspect of an upgrade is getting rid of the old stuff. Lots of it was tossed into roller bins. I talked with this crew member who was emptying the bins, and he showed me what the emergency water looked like. Lots of little packets, like individual doses. In an emergency, nothing would be wasted, nothing spilled. Clever. Now he will drain all these millions of packets, and the water goes overboard, and the plastic recycled like everything else on board. All leftover food on the boat is processed (and I think it gets burned!) The emergency food is treated the same way – biscuits processed, and the plastic wrappers recycled These cruise ships are very ecologically careful.